Beauty, Portrait and Fine Art Photographer/Cinematographer
Sleep time: by Michael Dote
Part one: Self-portraits
Artist’s statement:
The body of work I’ve began is a series of self portraits which will serve as a vaulting point for a much larger body of work that I will be creating in the near future. What I have begun is a series of environmental self-portraits, with the exposure time corresponding with the amount of sleep I get. In creating one of these portraits, the last thing I do before I go to bed is open the shutter while on the bulb setting and the first thing I do in the morning is close the shutter. This project attempts to question traditional measurements of time while simultaneously presenting three dimensions within a two dimensional space. The presentation and perception of time has always been of interest to me, and in creating these long exposure photographs has allowed me to view multiple moments of time occurring within the same space.
This project evolved from studio-based self-portraiture that I had been doing with long exposures and multiple strobe flashes. In that instance, the shutter speed was not relevant to the portrait’s exposure whatsoever. The aperture was the primary controlling factor under those set of conditions because the short duration of the flash did not take into consideration the shutter speed. Even though some of those images were visually compelling, I did not see that project having any life outside of their visual qualities.
As a result, I decided to change the direction of my self-portraiture. In keeping with the same understanding that I would make the shutter speed irrelevant, I set out to do a project that would be visually compelling while speaking about something else. While doing self-portraits that conceptually referenced Matthew Pillsbury, I remembered something I had read about the photographer Bressai. Bressai’s approach to Paris at night involved timing his exposures for the length of time he would smoke a cigarette. As soon as his cigarette was finished, he would end his exposure. I decided to experiment with a long exposure for the length of time that I would sleep.
I am fascinated by exposures that don’t last for a predefined amount time, but are instead done for the amount of time that it takes for a task to complete itself. In a sense, this photographic project attempts to redefine the way that we measure time. Instead of having the time of the exposure being based upon a tradition of calculations we’ve made upon the rotation of the Earth and the rotation of the earth around the sun, it is instead based upon something very imprecise and human. In a sense, it makes photography for me less of a mechanical process with precise numbers stemming from a tradition of calculation determining the length of time that my camera takes a photo, and more of a human-centered process in which my biology and the environment around me is determining the actions of my machine. This is something that I find interesting- a process in which tradition has taken a back seat to environmental and biological factors, much like the modern day. This project has made photography into a much more expressive medium for me, because instead of being shackled to my understanding of technique and propriety in the rather precise process of exposing a photograph, I am simply framing my shot, starting my photo and going to sleep. I wake up and the photo is done. No calculations are being made to determine exposure, and the mathematics inherent to this mechanical process is a combination of guesswork, and torpidity.
Taking a photo for any expanse of time, whether it be the short duration of time necessary to freeze action or the long duration of time you need to take a photograph in a pitch black room, makes the two dimensional photographic print into a three dimensional object in a remarkably different way than sculpture creates three dimensional forms. Whereas a sculpture presents height, width, and depth, the three dimensions that are visible in a photograph are height, width, and time. Photography in this was is a very unique process, because it allows our eyes to visualize the passage of time. It is a unique medium in that it allows us to see the un-seeable and to experience perception through a mechanical process, and perceive things that our natural senses have denied us access to. With a very short exposure we can see something so fast that no human eye can perceive it. With a long exposure and a stationary camera, we have the unique opportunity to see multiple times at the same time in the same place. This unique presentation of the 4th dimension layered upon a two dimensional form is something that photography does that no other medium can portray with the same degree of accuracy. We as photographers have the unique opportunity to capture time in a box and give it a space to dwell within.